Amy Welborn reviews the Netflix film on the Blessed Virgin Mary:
In focusing on Mary’s personal courage and tenacity, as well as centering the story on the arc of Herod’s terror and rage, the film removes Mary from the deeper, more foundational story of God’s people and indeed, salvation history. We know a lot about Herod’s megalomania but hear little about Israel’s suffering. Love will save the world, but from what? The brokenness of sin that has shattered all of creation or mean people?
No, Mary does not exactly girlboss her way through this survival thriller because she does, indeed, rely on God. But the nature of her reliance is succinctly expressed in her response to Gabriel’s news.
“Let it be me.”
What a difference one word makes. Not a fiat, a let it be rooted in her historic faith’s actual spirituality and practice, but a me centered on a vague trust in a vague self-empowering promise, a spiritually selective, self-referential framework that just might, circling back to the beginning of this piece and this project, sound familiar.